The names are weak. The names are always weak. But the toys actually ain't bad, for all the shit we've piled on them over the years. I mean, Transformers didn't do combiners without fiddly little extra bits until Magnaboss and Tripredacus, and those were only 3 bots apiece.

The names are weak. The names are always weak. But the toys actually ain't bad, for all the shit we've piled on them over the years. I mean, Transformers didn't do combiners without fiddly little extra bits until Magnaboss and Tripredacus, and those were only 3 bots apiece.

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You got that right, some of those names sucked big time. I did, however, dig the solid feel that a lot of the GoBot toys had.

Yeah, the toys were usually neat. The show was craptastic, though. For the life of me, I'll never understand why they didn't just dub Machine Robo. You'd figure it would have been the smartest move. Considering some of the most popular action cartoons at the time (Voltron, Robotech, Starblazers) were dubs.

The Gobot names are bad, no question, but no worse than a lot of Transformer names: Kup, Movor, Sideburn, Squeezeplay, Windbreaker... the list goes on.

The Gobots cartoon was weak, but it's not like Transformers was really high art either. And a lot of the small Gobot cars were head and shoulders above the minibots in terms of realism and build-quality (if not cuteness). Gobots as a franchise didn't grow and change quite as successfully as Transformers; Rock Lords were no dinobots and insecticons. And Transformers had the edge in terms of variety of figures: while most Gobots just became vehicles, Transformers became vehicles, objects, animals, etc.

But really, I think it's just one of those "VHS/Beta" (I'm dating myself... I guess a more current analogy would be "HD/BluRay") things where it's easy to look back years later and pick a "winner," but at the time it wasn't so clear-cut. Heck, I think I had as many Gobots as Transformers as a kid, and I didn't care what line they came from as long as they were fun to play with!

Monstrous was a rockin' combiner too. His individual units mostly didn't look like anything for their troubles, but combined he makes up for it. I've been meaning to look into getting Puzzler, it's a combiner and I collect Combiners.